What are common pitfalls when dealing with UTF-8 encoding in PHP and MySQL databases?

Common pitfalls when dealing with UTF-8 encoding in PHP and MySQL databases include not setting the correct character set for the database connection, not storing data in UTF-8 format, and not handling special characters properly. To solve this issue, make sure to set the character set for the database connection to UTF-8, store data in UTF-8 format, and use functions like utf8_encode and utf8_decode to handle special characters.

// Set the character set for the database connection to UTF-8
$mysqli->set_charset("utf8");

// Store data in UTF-8 format
$data = utf8_encode($data);

// Handle special characters using utf8_encode and utf8_decode
$special_chars = "âêîôû";
$encoded_chars = utf8_encode($special_chars);
$decoded_chars = utf8_decode($encoded_chars);